It was known that on the evening before the old banker had taken from a safety-deposit vault the sum of $20,000, which it was his intention to invest in some securities.  This money, in bills of very large denominations, was in the top drawer on the right side of the desk.  The dead man had apparently not been touched after the crime, but the drawer had been pried open and the money taken.  An ice-pick from the butler’s pantry had been used to force it.  The assassin had left no marks, finger-prints or tell-tale stains.  The victim had been instantly killed with the blow of the knife which lay on the floor beside him.

The butler had been arrested, charged with the crime, and his trial was now going on in the Criminal Court.  Circumstantial evidence was strong against him.  The woman spoke as though she echoed the current comment of the courtroom without realizing how it affected her.  She had done what she could.  She had employed an attorney at the recommendation of a person who had come to interview her.  She did not know who the person was nor why she should have employed this attorney at his suggestion, except that some one must be had to defend her husband, and uncertain what to do, she had gone to the first name suggested.

The girl listened, putting now and then a query.  She spoke slowly, careful to use only English words.  And while the woman talked she made a little drawing on the blank back of a menu card.  Now she began to question the woman minutely about the details of the room and the position of the furniture where the tragedy had occurred, the desk, the attitude of the dead man, the location of the wound, and exact distances.  And as the woman repeated the evidence of the police officers and the experts, the girl filled out her drawing with nice mathematical exactness like one accustomed to such a labor.

This was the whole story, and now the woman added the final interview with the attorney.  She made a sort of hopeless gesture.

“Nobody believes us,” she said.  “My husband did not kill him.  He was at home with me.  He knew nothing about it until he found his master dead at the table in the morning.  But there is only our word against all the lawyers and detectives and experts that Mr. Thompson has brought against us.”

“Who is Mr. Thompson?” said the girl.  She was deep in a study of her little drawing.

“He’s Mr. Marsh’s nephew, Mr. Percy Thompson.”

The girl, absorbed in the study of her drawing, now put an unexpected question.

“Has your husband lost an arm?”

“No,” she said, “he never had any sort of accident.”

A great light came into the girl’s face.  “Then I believe you,” she said.  “I believe every word . . . .  I think your husband is innocent.”

The girl was aglow with an enthusiastic purpose.  It was all there in her fine, expressive face.

“Now,” she said, “tell me about this nephew, this Mr. Percy Thompson.  Could we by any chance see him?”